So, I downloaded and installed the latest version (2.1) of Microsoft's Detours Express Package (hyperlink), and as I anticipated I am to build the libs myself with nmake. However, I try to do so, and it claims that it is up to date and does nothing, to say the least of which is not the behavior I was expecting. I'm on Vista, and made sure to give the command prompt administrative privileges...

I installed the files to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Research\Detours Express 2.1", and the command I am issuing is:[quote]nmake "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Research\Detours Express 2.1"[/quote]I am using the copy of nmake.exe that comes with Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition.

The exact output I get is:[quote]C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin>nmake "C:\Program Files\Micr
osoft Research\Detours Express 2.1"

Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 9.00.21022.08
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

'"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Research\Detours Express 2.1"' is up-to-date[/quote]Can anyone tell me what I am not doing, or failing to understand? I have not had issues with this sort of task before.

You're running nmake incorrectly.  You're telling it that the directory is a target that should be updated.  It doesn't know how to update the directory, so it considers it up-to-date and does nothing.  Recheck the instructions on how to run nmake.

Could you be more specific? The documentation for the Detours package simply states:[quote]To build the libraries and the sample applications, type "nmake".[/quote]And I double checked the MSDN documentation for nmake, and tried the following:[quote]nmake /f "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Research\Detours Express 2.1\makefile"[/quote]Where "makefile" is the name of the supplied makefile. 'cd' fails (nmake fatal-error U1077) and returns an exit code of 0x01.

So, I still have no idea what is wrong.

Edit: Wow, I feel really stupid now. I examined things closer and realized the problem, and you were absolutely right; it was clear-cut user error. Thanks for your assistance Kp. I got it to work very quickly once I realized my mistake.

No, I could not be more specific, as I haven't built this package.  I didn't have it on hand to check the documentation for exactly how to run it.  I only recognized that your invocation was confusing nmake.  I'd hoped the documentation from Detours would tell you exactly what to do when I sent you back to it.  Glad to see you got it working anyway.

For the benefit of any future readers, could you post the exact steps you followed to get it to build?  I assume the key was getting nmake in the right directory and/or getting some environment variables set in a particular way.

Well, that's why I ended up feeling so silly. I was trying to invoke nmake via the standard Windows command prompt mechanism, which lacked the Visual Studio environment settings in their entirety; Once I loaded up the command prompt mechanism that comes as part of Visual Studio, it was simply a matter of navigating to the source directory and inputting "nmake".

[quote author=Dyndrilliac link=topic=17725.msg180594#msg180594 date=1228002541]
Well, that's why I ended up feeling so silly. I was trying to invoke nmake via the standard Windows command prompt mechanism, which lacked the Visual Studio environment settings in their entirety; Once I loaded up the command prompt mechanism that comes as part of Visual Studio, it was simply a matter of navigating to the source directory and inputting "nmake".
[/quote]
Ah.  That's a matter of environment variables.